$500 Million Campaign Reveals New Fundraising Might for National Park Foundation

Will Shafroth leans across a conference table, mimicking an exhausted marathon runner straining to break the finish-line tape. He’s trying to convey how hard the fundraisers at the organization he leads, the National Park Foundation, had to work to keep up the pace of its first-ever capital campaign.

Donors were so responsive that the 50-year-old nonprofit’s board kept moving the goalposts, from $250 million to, eventually, double that.

“Hey guys, come on! Give us a break!” Shafroth exclaims, acting out his team’s frustration with the ever-moving target.

The fundraisers must have gotten a second wind. On Tuesday, the foundation, which previously had never raised more than $25 million in a year, announced it has exceeded the goal, with more than $515 million collected so far. The five-year campaign, tied to the centennial of the national-park system, will wrap up at year’s end.

At a board meeting at the Grand Canyon last October, Shafroth says, the foundation began looking past the current campaign, pondering a big question: “What do we need to do as an organization, to prepare for the next big thing?”

Corporate Support

The $500 million goal was hit in March, Shafroth says, thanks in part to some very pleasant surprises: a handful of megagifts, and the growth of corporate revenue.

“The performance of our corporate fundraising turned out to be a lot more than we thought,” says Shafroth, who joined the foundation as president in 2015. Partners like American Express, the Hallmark Channel, the health-insurance giant Humana, the food manufacturer Nature Valley, the outdoor retailer REI, and the railroad company Union Pacific stepped up with support.

Donations by corporate partners have brought in about $90 million, nearly 18 percent of the campaign’s total. Before 2013, the foundation brought in no more than $5 million in corporate support annually, says Scott Anderson, its senior director for communications.

“Normally, corporate giving for an organization like ours would be 8 percent — and that would be on the high end,” Shafroth says.

He adds, “We’re starting to see corporations come to us. People recognize the value of the brand of the national parks.” All the more remarkable, because the foundation holds corporate partners to strict gift-agreement guidelines when it comes to public recognition. As Shafroth puts it, “Nobody’s getting a big banner.”

Instead, corporations touted their support through a variety of media campaigns.

Nature Valley produced a commercial for its granola bars that featured hikers saying what spending time outdoors gives them. Humana’s messages focus on senior health care and the importance of exercising; the company has also created virtual-reality videos that show people exploring specific parks. Union Pacific created a video for the campaign that emphasizes the role the railroad played in building and enhancing national parks.

The process of working with corporate donors has been “iterative,” Shafroth says. “Our team will spend a day or two with them, understanding their values and their priorities as a company. And then we brainstorm with them.”

Megagifts and More

Individuals and family foundations have given two of every three dollars the campaign has raised, for a total of $330 million. The drive has raked in millions from major donors, including $18.5 million from the financier David Rubenstein; $30 million from Burt’s Bees co-founder Roxanne Quimby ($20 million for an endowment and $10 million in inholdings, or privately owned parcels within parks and other public land); and a total of $95.7 million from two anonymous donors.

Rubenstein, who specializes in “patriotic philanthropy,” earmarked his 2016 gift for restoration and enhancements at the Lincoln Memorial. In addition to her cash gift, Quimby donated 87,000 acres in Maine’s North Woods, land valued at roughly $70 million, for the creation of a new national monument, a transformational gift Shafroth calls “Rockefeller-esque.”

To raise a half-billion dollars, the National Park Foundation invested heavily in direct marketing. It paid off: Direct-response donors grew by an average of 23 percent each year since 2013, Anderson says. The nonprofit expanded its major- and principal gifts staff from four to six fundraisers, to aid with stewardship. “We want to be a first-in-class stewardship organization,” Shafroth says.

The foundation-relations staff grew from one to three employees. Foundations have provided $80 million, more than 15 percent of the campaign’s take to date.

Shafroth credits the foundation’s board with setting the bar high with its ambitious goal, and with making the investments necessary to be successful. Al Baldwin, a Southern California homebuilder and board member since 2008, chaired the capital campaign from its launch.

“We just had to put ourselves in front of more and more people,” Shafroth says. “And the board helped immensely. When you have a really good product to sell, people respond.”

Close Partnership

In addition to the board’s bold vision, Shafroth credits a tighter relationship with the National Park Service with helping to push the campaign toward its goal. The foundation was chartered by Congress in 1967 to support the parks, but the nonprofit and the Park Service haven’t been as closely aligned during most of the foundation’s history as they are now, he says.

“We have buy-in throughout the Park Service for what we want to do, with them and for them,” he says. “That seems obvious, but we’re an independent 501(c)3. It’s not a foregone conclusion.” That relationship, he adds, “will pay big-time dividends going forward.”

Park Service personnel helped to develop the language and specific priorities for the foundation’s new strategic plan, Shafroth says. The board approved the plan in March.

“We’ve learned that there’s a very high need to help the parks address the restoration aspect of their mission,” he says. Going forward, there will be “less focus on creating new parks, more focus on restoring what we have and making them better.”

Attendance at the parks will be a key measure of success, he adds, a refinement of the campaign’s “protect, connect, and inspire” mission statement.

“It’s hard to quantify inspiration, but we can quantify engagement,” Shafroth adds. “How many people got to the park? How many people signed up for a science discovery program? How many fourth graders went to a park?”

Future Plans

With the campaign winding down, the foundation and its board are planning to make the most of the organization’s newfound fundraising might.

A feasibility study is a likely next step, Shafroth says: “What would the market bear? Depending on what we did, would there be a demand for it?”

He and the board see some obvious areas for greater focus — more intensive stewardship and recruitment of donors who give $1,000 and up, for example, as well as foundation, corporate, and planned giving. “Each of those is coordinated and connected,” Shafroth says. “If you’re running a corporation, you might also have a private foundation. You might also make an individual gift.”

Overall, the charity leader sees a lot of promise for future philanthropy — if he and his team can capture it.

“There’s much more opportunity to take advantage of than we’re able to,” Shafroth says. “That’s what keeps me up at night: How many more foundations, or wealthy families, or merchants can we get in front of, to tell our story?”

Correction: An earlier version of this article contained incorrect information about Al Baldwin’s role with the National Park Foundation board and board action on the organization’s strategic plan. This version also includes additional information about Roxanne Quimby’s contribution to the foundation’s campaign.